My go-to tropical cocktail used to be a Pina Colada, but when my husband and I visited Maui, I decided to try something else. That was my first time drinking a Mai Tai, and it soon became my new favorite cocktail. I had one at the luau we went to. I had one at various restaurants we visited. I liked it so much that I quickly decided I would need to find a great Mai Tai recipe when I got home.

Desperate for the perfect Mai Tai recipe to recall my lazy days at the beach on Maui, I experimented with a few different recipes and ended up making one delicious change that resulted in what I consider the perfect Mai Tai recipe.  This new and improved recipe tastes closer to what I remember from the islands, and it’s going to be my go-to drink while floating in the pool this summer.

You can get the ingredients for this Mai Tai recipe pretty inexpensively.  For the price of a few resort-priced cocktails, you’ll have enough ingredients for an epic backyard luau.

“Ono” means “delicious” in Hawaiian, so I’ve named this version of my Mai Tai recipe after my thoughts upon first sip.

Ono Mai Tai Recipe

Ingredients:

1 ounce amaretto liqueur
1 ounce triple sec
2 ounces orange juice
2 ounces pineapple juice
2 ounces Captain Morgans spiced rum
ice

Method:

Fill a tall glass with ice.  Mix the first 4 ingredients and pour over ice.  Float the Captain Morgans on top.

The glass pictured to the right contains half a serving of the recipe above.  For first taste, I split the recipe in two small glasses, one for me and one for my husband.  He particularly loves amaretto liqueur, so he was definitely a fan of this drink.

I used fresh squeezed orange juice from the orange tree in our backyard.  The oranges weren’t quite as sweet as I would like, so I added a little Splenda to compensate.  You can use your favorite store-bought orange juice which shouldn’t need any additional sweetening.

I used Dole pineapple juice.  I saw a bartender using this exact same juice at a bar on Maui, so I don’t think it gets more authentic than this.  Although, if you happen to be cutting up a fresh pineapple, you could always use the fresh juice.

Happy drinking!